(39) Joliet, IL & Springfield, MO

Wednesday, February 4th: Even though we’ve had a million days off, we had another one today in Indianapolis. I went on a quick trip to Wal-Mart with Caroline for a new windshield wiper for the truck and other van needs. The rest of the day I spent working in my room sending a bunch of emails and spending a lot of time on the phone.

Thursday, February 5th: We left Indianapolis and drove the 213 miles(8533 total miles) to Joliet, Illinois. After checking in to our hotel, we had a quick venue meeting before leaving for the Rialto Square Theater in downtown Joliet. It was a bunch of very nice older guys who helped us put up the show in the theater. Load in was very simple and smooth.

Friday, February 6th: We had shows at 10:30am(56) and 12:45pm(57) today. The venue provided us with a lunch between meals form a local deli which was very nice and very good. In the second show, Dave, who plays Milo, had some microphone problems. The trick to changing his mic was that he never leaves the stage for more than a few seconds once the show starts. We figured out that there is a song that he doesn’t sing in so we told Carolyn and Lindsay to get him off stage during that number. When he got offstage, Jill and I were ready with the spare mic. Dave didn’t even know at first why he had been told to exit, but knew as soon as Jill and I started stripping him and taking off his mic. It was a very exciting 45 seconds and then he was back onstage with a working mic. We haven’t had excitement like that quite some time so it was a very nice change. Load out went quickly and we were back at the hotel by 3:30pm. That afternoon, I went out to a paint shop, home depot and Walgreens with Caroline to get paint, paint supplies and microphone tape. That night Carolyn, Dave, Eric, Margo and I watched 3 more episodes of “Lost.”

Saturday, February 7th: Rudy and I drove the 481 miles(9014 total miles) to Springfield, Missouri. It was a long drive but pretty smooth and we stopped at Steak & Shake for lunch. We had a crew meeting that night and had to find a place to have dinner. The two women at the front desk were extremely helpful and called a bunch of restaurants asking if there was somewhere we could have a meeting and dinner. We ended up at a restaurant called Mille’s which turned out to be really good.

Sunday, February 8th: I watched morning new shows and then went out with a group of people who were going shopping. I stayed at the Barnes & Nobles in the café reading while everyone else went shopping. It was definitely a good idea to get out of my room that morning. We had a load in that night at Missouri State University in their Juanita K. Hammons Hall. It was a very large and very nice theater. The crew was made up of students which is always fun for us because they are so interested in what we do. Most of our students weren’t even Theater majors! Caroline and Jill made friends with our wardrobe girl and took her out for a coffee run. We had more hands than normal which made things go fairly smoothly. I took most of the second half of load in to do paint touch ups.

Monday, February 9th: This morning we had a show at 10:00am(58) where we though about 280 kids were coming. But I guess the word got out how amazing our show was and we had over 800 kids in the audience. The show went very well and we did all our presets for the night show and left for an afternoon off. I did a little bit of work and then went to some local batting cages that were only 25 cents. I should have guessed by the price that they weren’t going to be good and when I got there I was really disappointed. I hit a couple of rounds and then headed back to the hotel. We had a 7:00pm(59) show that went well. The students kept saying that they set records with their load outs, but they missed our record by about 3 minutes with 1 hour and 9 minutes.